Women at Work: Pia Guerra
No matter its mission, art should always stir emotion in its audience, and to be sure, Pia Guerra, an award-winning Canadian comic book artist and editorial cartoonist, understands the assignment. Guerra is perhaps best known for co-creating and penciling the critically-acclaimed DC/Vertigo comic book series Y: The Last Man to many of her fans. The iconic story transports its readers to a post-apocalyptic world where a mysterious plague kills every mammal on Earth with a Y chromosome except for slacker-slash-amateur escape artist Yorick Brown and Ampersand, his pet capuchin monkey. After spending more than a decade in development, the title has since been adapted into a TV show for FX.
Guerra has earned several nominations throughout her groundbreaking art career, such as a Prix Du Scenario Award nod from the Angoulême International Comics Festival for Best Script along with Y co-creator Brian K. Vaughan and a Hugo Award nomination for Best Graphic Story shared with Vaughan and José Marzán, Jr. Most impressively, she has won multiple awards, including Spike TV’s Scream Award for Best Comic Book alongside Vaughan, a Joe Shuster Award for Outstanding Comic Book Artist, a Harvey Award for Best New Series split with Vaughan and Marzán Jr, and an Eisner Award for Best Penciller/Inker Team also shared with Marzán Jr.
In the past, she has drawn stories for Black Canary, Comic Book Tattoo, Doctor Who, Hellblazer, Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror Comics, Spider-Man Unlimited, Superman Adventures, and Torchwood Magazine. Additionally, Guerra has illustrated for White Wolf gaming manuals, produced commercial storyboards, was a production designer on a sci-fi pilot, Space Arm, and worked as an executive producer on the Y: The Last Man TV series.
The award-winning comic book series Y: The Last Man was published by DC Comics’ imprint Vertigo from 2002 to 2008. Guerra’s artistic style truly brings the characters to life and evokes raw emotions from fans that range from heartwarming to heartbreaking throughout its epic 60 issue run. You can purchase her work in the books section of her website here.
After her political cartoon “Big Boy” went viral, Guerra became a regular contributor to The Nib, drawing single-panel comics for the publication. Alongside her writing partner and husband, Ian Boothby, also an Eisner Award-winning comic book creator, she has produced numerous gag cartoons for Go Comics, MAD Magazine, and the New Yorker. Moreover, during the Trump administration, Guerra completed popular editorial cartoons for the New York Times and theWashington Post.
Legendary journalist Dan Rather also retweeted her “Hero's Welcome” cartoon, which Guerra explains is a personal career highlight, among so many others. The cartoon depicts assistant football coach and security guard Aaron Feis from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. He was fatally shot in 2018, protecting children from a former student turned terrorist armed with an AR-15 rifle. The crowd before him tragically represents the many lives that mass school shootings have claimed in the United States.
Her thought-provoking book, published by Image Comics, “Me the People,” is a collection of some of her more prominent editorial cartoons that cover the self-delusion, corruption, and chaos of the Trump administration and the GOP’s enabling of his attacks on democracy. In addition, she explores the topics of gun violence, racism, and the other horrific and shameful “milestones” in his presidency, which Guerra so expertly skewers through this brilliant form of activist art.
Pia Guerra’s keen observations and snarky commentary help create serrated visual statements that linger in her viewer’s minds long after turning the final page of the collection. Guerra gives her audience a sense of hope that together, as a nation, we can overcome this shameful time in United States history if only we remain vigilant and stand firm against bigotry and hate. Although Trump has left office, many of his goons and idolaters stay in Washington DC, and his far-right fanbase seems to grow larger and hit lower every day. In the year after the end of his turbulent presidency, “Me the People” serves as both a cautionary tale and a lesson in history that fans of her distinct visual style won’t soon forget.
Daily Cartoon: Friday, June 29th, 2018 for the New Yorker By Pia Guerra
“Hero’s Welcome” by Pia Guerra
How did you get your start cartooning? Is art something you have been interested in since you were a child?
I’ve been drawing since I could hold a pencil, I had a lot of positive encouragement from my mother who loved when I drew pictures of birds. A cousin left an X-Men comic at our house when I was ten and that’s when I discovered how I wanted to channel my drawing skills and I just kept going from there.
How would you say you developed your voice and style as an artist? Was it something that came naturally or did you have to work at it over time?
It took a while. I spent a long time just getting the basics down and then I was getting feedback that I didn’t have my ‘voice’ sorted yet so I worked on that, which involved trying different styles, exaggerating figures, streamlining strokes, reading a lot of books by different artists, experimenting with lighting. A lot of trial and error and friends pointing out where I could fix things. Mostly it was learning how to look at my work and see how it looked like every other artist just starting out and finding a way to make it stand out. It’s not easy.
What or who has influenced your work the most? Do you have a favorite artist, comic book, or another form of media that has inspired you professionally?
George Perez was the first really big inspiration for me. I loved The New Teen Titans and I spent many hours trying to draw like him. Later there would be many more artists who would influence me: Paul Smith, Barry Windsor Smith, Kyle Baker, Chris Bachalo, John Romita Jr., Bryan Talbot, P. Craig Russel to name a few.
How has technology changed your approach to art? With the advent of personal drawing tablets, digital painting software, and even the iPad Pro, have these new tools affected the way you create?
Once the iPad Pro came out, I was so happy because I had been waiting for YEARS for a tablet to do what I wanted it to do. I had used Bamboos and Intuos and a Wacom but they never felt like what I envisioned in my head a perfect drawing tool would be. I love working on paper, but ink was so intimidating, I could never master it, it always looked a mess, never consistent, but digitally I can erase ink lines and redraw instantly without having to wait for white-out to dry. The flow was seamless and my work just leapt forward. I was working in a hybrid way for years, pencilling on paper and scanning to ink in Photoshop, or drawing pencils in Photoshop and printing on Bristol to ink on paper, and it never looked right to me. Then I got the Pro, and I’ve been doing all my work in Procreate ever since.
How do you decide what subject to focus on in your editorial cartoons?
I watch a lot of news and wait for a strong emotional reaction. It’s not the cleanest way of doing it but that’s where my strongest stuff comes from. Anger, sadness, awe, humour, schadenfreude… I just wait for it. It can take hours or it can pop up fully formed before I’m even done with my morning shower.
How do you approach storytelling? Can you describe your artistic process, from reading a script to drawing the pages?
I read through a script, imagining it play out in my head, sometimes as a movie or as a comic I’m flipping through. I see the pages, I take mental notes of the highlights, strong points, low points, quiet moments and then I start with page one, draw a quick thumbnail in the margins of the script and get started. I’ll visualize the page and find the most important panel and give it the most focus with the other panels either leading into or out of that focal point. Draw until sunrise and then go to bed.
What does your day-to-day look like as a full-time artist? Do you have a set schedule or a studio space where you do your work?
We work from home. Depending on the job, I’m usually working on the couch until dawn, but this fall I’m working with an animation studio doing design work as part of a team and so I’m up early working remotely in the home studio.
If you couldn’t be a cartoonist, what would you do instead?
When I was a kid I wanted to be an EMT or a pilot. Nowadays, a small vessel operator on the waters around here seems like it would be fun.
Vancouver is beautiful. I wouldn’t mind sailing around the coast either! Can you tell us a little about the events that inspired you to make the switch from comic books to editorial cartoons? Do you find that one style is more complicated than the other to execute?
I’ve drawn editorial cartoons on and off over the years, whenever a story got to me I’d draw something. Some I shared with friends. It never looked right but I kept trying to figure it out. In 2015 I saw a documentary about Herblock and that just got the gears going in my head, like, “Oh, that’s how you do it!” and it wasn’t about how it looked, just the approach, and I saw what I was doing wrong and decided to give it a go.
All of this just as Trump started his ridiculous campaign… I thought about Herblock and it clicked and the images just poured out. The feedback I got from friends on social media just encouraged me to do more. Then it went beyond friends and I saw how cathartic it was both for me and the people sharing their own frustrations through sharing the cartoon and then it became a project.
Tell us about your 2018 book from Image Comics, “Me the People.” It’s funny, poignant, and beautifully drawn, yet at the same time devastating and rage-inducing. What was your journey like putting the collection together and what was your selection process? How does the production aspect of this experience differ from other projects that you have worked on in the past? Additionally, can fans look forward to another collection of your editorial cartoons in the future?
I had friends pushing me to collect the cartoons and so I started looking into it. Eric Stephenson over at Image was interested and then it was figuring out how many pages it would be. It came down to putting all the cartoons on the table and taking out the ones that didn’t fit and there was the book. Our editor, Branwyn Bigglestone was so supportive and just kick ass at making it work, right down to the orange binding on the spine. I don’t know if there will be another collection, if there’s interest we’ll look into it.
I imagine that a lot of your editorial content is born from a place of concern. Would you say that drawing political cartoons has been a cathartic experience for you? Do you feel like this is your most socially impactful work yet?
Anger more like. Throwing your hands up in the air and wtf?! That feeling, and there was a lot of it in 2016. It felt good to get those feelings out of my system and seeing how it did the same for others. Impactful? I don’t know. I’ve had so many amazing responses from people saying the cartoons meant a lot to them so maybe? I may not be the person to ask.
I know that you have done work as a penciler for Vertigo, DC, and Marvel. What, if any, is the most difficult part about working for a big publisher and how does the process differ from editorial publishers like The New Yorker, MAD, and The Nib?
The relationship on a comics team is more long-term, involving more communication and problem-solving. Doing editorial and gag cartoons is solitary, and fast. You come up with an idea, draw it up and submit it, maybe it sells, maybe it doesn’t. You might get an occasional note from an editor asking if you have anything on the impeachment but otherwise, not a peep.
What is a piece of art or a project that you’re the proudest of to date and why?
I think it would be the last issue of Y. It turned out closest to how I visualized it and based on how many people have broken down in front of me after it came out… that is something I’m very proud of. I set out to mess with people’s heads and succeeded.
There were plenty of gut-punch moments in the series run, but the final three issues really threw me for a loop. I think that was the first time I cried after finishing a comic! It was such an emotionally impactful ending. While on the subject of emotional impact, which of your political cartoons would you say had the most impact on your audience? Similarly, which one had a particular impact on you?
The cartoon about the Parkland shooting hit way harder than I thought it would. When the Trump/Bannon Big Boy cartoon got a lot of press the feedback was a lot of laughter but this was very different, people were wrecked and it got very overwhelming. I received a note from a teacher who showed it to her class and all these kids were crying and that just broke me.
What was the most valuable lesson that you learned from your experience as co-creator and penciller for Y: The Last Man and what does your new role as executive producer on the FX series entail? Has your relationship to the material changed at all, and what is it like taking the comic to another medium and working with a whole new set of collaborators?
Done is better than perfect. That can be a hard lesson to figure out. I still struggle with it sometimes.
The executive producer role is interesting, they send over a script or a rough episode and ask if I have any notes and that’s about it. The pandemic limited involvement even more in that I couldn’t visit the set when it finally got the go-ahead. I do look forward to meeting everyone someday. It sounds like an involved job but really it’s very much letting others who know what they’re doing do their thing.
Is there a particular panel, page, or moment from Y: The Last Man that you enjoyed the most working on or that still stands out in your memory today?
I really liked the visual haiku in Safeword, the page with 17 panels. So much of that arc was just fun and weird to do.
The Y: The Last Man adaption feels especially timely given the current politically polarizing state of affairs in the United States. Between the fight for reproductive rights, the Me Too movement, and the global pandemic, do you find that this story is even more relevant today than it was when it was first released?
Y was talking about what was happening twenty years ago, it was relevant for then. The show is talking about what is happening now. If we were doing the book today I have no doubt we’d be addressing the same issues because that’s where the conversations are at. It took a long time to get here, and the book has gotten a bit dated since it came out but the timing is amazing considering how much has happened over the last few years to add to this story. I love that it’s now and not back in 2008 where it could have just gone so stale so quickly.
What is your dream character or property to work on?
I’ve always wanted to do a Marvel one-shot like the Barry Windsor Smith X-Men comic that made me want to draw comics. No specific character, just something in one issue, powerful and really fun. That or Buckaroo Banzai.
The world of cartooning and comic books are traditionally male-dominated spaces. As a trailblazer for women in the business, can you comment on the current state of representation in the industry and what role you believe creators have in fostering an inclusive space for everyone?
It’s a lot better than where it was when I started. There’s still a lot of work to do, and it’s good to see companies working towards broadening the audience, but it gets frustrating at times to see certain corners of the industry doing everything it can to claw things back. Nostalgia can be as toxic as it is enticing. The important thing is to keep fighting the temptation to take shortcuts because that’s all it is. Show the world as it is, not some fake thing full of cliches and stereotypes. Do better.
What’s next for your career? Do you have any projects that you’re excited about coming up?
I have projects I’m working on, some for too long, others that are just starting. We’ll see where it goes. A lot right now is just making sure rent is paid every month. Whatever time is left over after that goes into personal projects.
Do you have some tips or advice for someone, specifically women, interested in making a living as a comic book artist or editorial cartoonist?
Be stubborn, there’s no one path to success, try everything, listen to feedback of those you trust, don’t feel obligated to follow every piece of advice, look for blind spots and face them. Block the assholes.
“The Fuel for the Fire” by Pia Guerra
To keep up with Pia Guerra and her fantastic work, follow her on Twitter, @PiaGuerra, and @Pia.Guerra on Instagram. For more information on Guerra and her many accomplishments, you can check out her official website HellKitty.com!
Special thanks to John Paul Lavin for his helpful feedback!
